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Manila Bulletin devider Opinion devider Matter of the heart

Matter of the heart

Published Aug 31, 2024 06:47 pm

REFLECTIONS TODAY

Gird your loins

Gospel • Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The heart is a “tricky master.” It has “reasons which reason knows nothing of” (Blaise Pascal). This saying comes to mind as we reflect on today’s Gospel where Jesus responds to the criticism put forward by the Pharisees and the scribes against him and his disciples for their seeming lack of observance of the ritual purity laws. Using a text from Isaiah, Jesus proclaims, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts” (vv 6-7). 


The discussion starts with something seemingly banal: the Pharisees notice that some of Jesus’ disciples eat their meals with unwashed hands. Hence, they ask him, “Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders...?” (v 5). To this, Jesus responds with a counter-challenge inviting his critics to look deeply into their hearts and see if they themselves have not rendered the Law “impure” by their misguided reinterpretation of it. 


This pronouncement from Jesus could be better understood by reading Mk 7:9-13. In these verses Jesus criticizes the Pharisees’ reinterpretation of the Law which leads to the withholding of assistance to elderly parents, a brazen violation of the fourth commandment to honor one’s parents. The heart of the matter does not really concern purity laws as the Pharisees insinuate. 


Jesus says, it is a matter of the heart. The real impurities do not come from external factors but from what comes out of one’s heart. Defilement has to do not so much with what passes into or out of our hands, but with what enters and goes out of our hearts: “evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery” (vv 21-22), all referring to the original commandments alluded to in the First Reading today.


In saying this, Jesus does not abrogate the Law but intensifies its application by leading us to question the motives of the heart, the common source of all actions. And there is a further lesson: while the Pharisees and religious authorities divide people between clean and unclean, holy and unholy, Jesus does the exact opposite. He brings people together. He exercises the ministry of compassion by eating with sinners, touching the unclean, raising the dead. Indeed, there are no quarantines with Jesus. The Kingdom of God has come, and it is offered to all!

Source: “366 Days with the Lord 2024,” St. Paul’s, 7708 St. Paul Rd., SAV, Makati City (Phils.); Tel.: 632-895-9701; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.stpauls.ph.

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